Agenda - Planning Commission - 11/02/2017

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Zoning Bulletin July 25, 2017 I Volume 11 I Issue 14 used to reject ordinance because City's discretion to rezone is preempted by state statutory mandate that zoning be consistent with general plans Citation: City of Mogan Hill v. Bushey, 12 Cal. App. 5th 34, 218 Cal. Rpti: 3d 276 (6th Dist. 2017) • CALIFORNIA (05/30/17)—This case addressed the issue of whether vot- ers could validly utilize the power of referendum to reject a city's chosen method of making a parcel's zoning consistent with a general plan. The Background/Facts: River Park Hospitality ("River Park") owned a vacant parcel in the City of Morgan Hill (the "City"). Prior to November 2014, the City's general plan provided a use designation for the'parcel as "Industrial," and the parcel was zoned "ML-Light Industrial." In November 2014, the City amended its general plan to change the land use designation for the parcel to "Commercial." The parcel's zoning remained unchanged after the general plan amendment.. California Government Code § 65860 mandates that a parcel's zoning must be consistent with the municipality's general plan. In the meantime, § 65680 permits the maintenance of inconsistent zoning pending selection of a consis- tent zoning. In April 2015, in an attempt to resolve the inconsistency between the 2014 "Commercial" land use designation for the parcel and its pre-2014 zoning of "ML-Light Industrial," the City Council approved Ordinance no. 2131 ("0- 2131"). 0-2131 would have changed the parcel's zoning from "ML-Light Industrial" to "CG-General Commercial." The Morgan Hill Hotel Coalition (the "Coalition") submitted a timely refer- endum petition challenging 0-2131. The "General Commercial" zoning designation for the parcel would have permitted a hotel, and the Coalition sought to prevent the development of a hotel on the parcel. The referendum process allows voters to veto statutes and ordinances enacted by local officials before those laws become sufficient. Once a referen- dum petition challenging an ordinance is timely filed and certified to be suf- ficient, "the effective date of the ordinance shall be suspended and the legisla- tive body shall reconsider the ordinance." (Cal.. Elec. Code, § 9237.) "If the legislative body does not entirely repeal the ordinance against which the peti- tion is filed, the legislative body shall submit the ordinance to the voters . . . . The ordinance shall not become effective until a majority of the voters voting on the ordinance vote in favor of it. If the legislative body repeals the ordinance or submits .the ordinance to the voters, and a majority of the voters voting on the ordinance do not vote in favor of it, the ordinance shall not again be enacted by the legislative body for a period of one year after the date of its repeal by the legislative body or disapproval by the voters." (Cal. Elec. Code, § 9241.) The City accepted a certification of sufficiency on the Coalition's referen- dum, but later "discontinue[d] processing" the referendum because the City contended that the referendum would "enact zoning that was inconsistent with" the City's general plan (i.e., by reverting the parcel's zoning back to © 2017 Thomson Reuters 3